Now in those days there dwelt in that city a brahmin known as Cloth-omens. And he had in a chest a suit of clothes which were gnawed by mice, and everything came to pass just as in the foregoing story. But when the son was on his way to the charnel-ground the Bodhisatta got there first and took his seat at the gate; and, picking up the suit which the young brahmin threw away, he returned to the pleasaunce. When the son told this to the old brahmin, the latter exclaimed, "It will be the death of the King's ascetic"; and entreated the Bodhisatta to throw that suit away, lest he should perish. But the ascetic replied, "Good enough for us are the rags that are flung away in charnel-grounds. We have no belief in superstitions about luck, which are not approved by Buddhas, Pacceka Buddhas, or Bodhisattas; and therefore no wise man ought to be a believer in luck." Hearing the truth thus expounded, the brahmin forsook his errors and took refuge in the Bodhisatta. And the Bodhisatta, preserving his Insight unbroken, earned re-birth thereafter in the Brahma Realm. [374.]

Having told this story, the Master, as Buddha, taught the Truth to the brahmin in this stanza:--

Whose renounces omens, dreams and signs,
That man, from superstition's errors freed,
Shall triumph o'er the paired Depravities
And o'er Attachments to the end of time.

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When the Master had thus preached his doctrine to the brahmin in the form of this stanza, he proceeded further to preach the Four Truths, at the close whereof that brahmin, with his son, attained to the First Path. The Master identified the Birth by saying, "The father and son of to-day were also the father and son of those days, and I myself the ascetic."

Footnotes

^215:1 Cf. Tevijja Sutta translated by Rhys Davids in "Buddhist Suttas," p. 197.

^215:2 An amaka-susana was an open space or grove in which corpses were exposed for wild-beasts to eat, in order that the earth might not be defiled. Cf. the Parsee 'Towers of Silence.'

^216:1 In Pali bho Gotama,--a form of familiar address. Brahmins are always represented as presuming to say bho to the Buddha.

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